I’m sorry, condolences on the loss of your dear aunts.
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How heartbreaking for your family. I’m sorry.
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The sixth anniversary of my brother’s hemorrhagic stroke is coming up. Last night, I reread the texts my other brothers and I sent each other during that time. Without going into detail, it was a roller coaster couple weeks, culminating in another, fatal stroke. I had blocked out all of the things that happened that made me angry at the health care system, and I remembered good things that happened during that time. I will not make the mistake of revisiting the bad stuff again. I definitely prefer to focus on the fact that we got to be there with my brother, who had estranged himself from everyone, during his time of greatest need. Lesson learned.
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I could put this in the no-replies forum, but this is all due to widowhood somehow.
My customer service litany of the last 8 days.
W-store | Instacart | picking errors | wrong delivery time | failure to promptly and fairly refund. About 3 hours total spent trying to correct this, maybe more. Multiple phone calls and an in person visit. Finally, at W’s — this was originally about $11.77. Now that the inconvenience is multiplying, I’ll accept that $50 credit.
Credit Union and Chase. The payment was correctly scheduled. The wire didn’t work. The same account numbers worked last month. Should I assume that credit unction accepted the error since $50 landed in my account. (An apology, perhaps?)
The federal government and the call with the Congresswoman’s office. May I please have the military money I am owed? Pretty please? Can you help? Please?
How about a prescription for a well known, cheap, often prescribed drug for a (post) cancer patient? Express Scripts is out of stock and doesn’t know when they are getting more!?! Another 2 hours of tracking that down, getting the rx moved, etc. And then reminding Express Scripts (for the 4th time) that I have not had Cigna since last July.
And now, Big Investment Company, closed a trust account (following spouse’s death; to change the social security numbers) without informing me that this change would cancel all the BillPays set up. They also failed to tell me they were changing my checking account/numbers! Would one think about sending me new checks or should I ask for them first? And, they can’t re-load the data. And this is now going on 48 hours since I discovered it. My Big Investment Company advisor acts clueless until I mention that if I have to type in all the account numbers again, I might as well hand the accounts to Morgan Stanley. (3 hours far).
Somehow all of these things relate to the loss of my husband and all that has landed on my plate. From his illness through long term disability to death, and all the Death/Survivorship/Transition Services “teams”. I’d just love a week without these issues filling my time!
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Oh, how frustrating and annoying and soul-sucking for you! I am so sorry you have had to go through this…… I hope that next week goes better. 
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Oh Lordy. So sorry
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There was an article in the WaPo just this week about the way the work of being a widow/er is exhausting and ignored — lots of support for grief, but little cooperation or empathy over the many calls, forms, meetings, etc to iron out the change.
I’m so sorry the businesses have fallen short. That sounds like a horrible bunch of calls!
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@Mom22039 : I’m so sorry.
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I need to find that WaPo article!
@Mom22039 You know I understand, and there will come a day you won’t have to speak to the “death department.” Of my almost 5 hours with Amex over 6 weeks on the phone, I finally lost it around hour 3 and gave the representative tears and hell.
I thought I had everything settled, and the big stuff, I have. There was an auto draft payment for a medical membership my husband had that just came through last week. I thought I had logged into all his account and took the credit card out, but this one didn’t show a card on file; I assumed when I didn’t pay the statement when it came, that all would be good. Luckily an email to the society got the payment reversed. Glad I have email notification on the business card for charges without card present, so I caught it the day it posted.
Hugs to you for jumping through the hurdles; it will make you stronger.
@greenbutton I would love to see that article. I will go search for it, but if you have the title, would love to know it.
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I am so sorry. I think this may be the article. https://wapo.st/3xIKHoS
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yes, that’s the one
So, after the week from hell (see above), I’m recommending all of my friends with joint accounts set $30k in an account with just the wife’s name on it. I’m sorry if this is coming off as sexist, but most of my friends earn far less than their husbands and may not be fully knowledgeable on the accounts. (If it works for your marriage, each fund an account). Easy access to a pool of money can reduce some stress!
I paid all the bills and made all of the investments for at least the first 20-25 years of our marriage. He later made his own decisions for his 401k, with regard to our general goals. DH generally took care of taxes and insurance. Everything else was in my wheelhouse. (Heck, I selected our current house when he was on a ship in the Pacific).
I knew how to do this stuff. The financial institutions made life harder than it needed to be. An agent from Fidelity admitted “on a recorded line” that they (screwed up and) made this harder than it needed to be. So many wasted hours trying to make sure bills get paid!
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I dealt with Fidelity when my father died. They were the worst!
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We dealt with Vanguard when my mom passed. They made two big errors that my DH caught. It was extremely straightforward math…take an amount and divide it equally between me and my two siblings. It was an error drawing the account to a negative SIX figure number! How the heck does that happen?
We had very good experiences with fidelity on settling/splitting 2 estates for our 2 sets of parents. We also think we are well set up with them with trust accounts, joint checking account, several retirement accounts with clear beneficiaries. A little concerned about the latest comments here
Sorry for all your unfortunate situations. Can you explain your recommendation a little more? My husband and I have almost all our accounts as joint. Are you saying there would be reason to have money in just my name?
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We have stuff in joint accounts too that goes to the other at death I thought? Lots of stuff with Fidelity as well. Now i’m more nervous!
I handled my mother’s estate when my father passed away. They had a joint checking account and my mom had full access to the account after my father passed away. I then sent my fathers death certificate and will to all of his accounts - fidelity, Schwab, etc, and everything was transferred to my mom without a lot of problem. The only issue(s) we had were accounts my mom didn’t know about. We had to wait for monthly statements to come in. I then consolidated everything into 2 accounts.
What you should do is to make sure you get the prices of stocks/mutual funds for the day the person passed away because that would be the basis you would use to calculate capital gains. You should inform your brokerage firms and accountant so they’ll calculate capital gains correctly.
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This article may be helpful although referring to widowed people younger than us, I assume!
Gift link